There and Back Again, Via Dragon
by ThisCatWhatDidThat
Summary: They had killed them all, leaving them as the only survivors. So they fled south, away to the warmer lands, away to a land of unrest. Deep in the heart of a mountain, a dragon stirs. Auish. Combining elements from both the books and films for both Hobbit and HTTYD
1. Chapter 1: Prologue

The final battle had killed them all.

He could remember all too clearly the pain, the phantom stabbing in his heart.

His mother, torn apart protecting a youngling dragon.

His father taking the blow meant for him, leaving them all alone after they had only just started being like a family.

His friends incinerated as they tried to help, their sacrifice all for nought.

And Astrid? _Oh _his sweet, sweet Astrid, shot down on Stormfly, falling into the icy waters, his name on her lips, crying out for help, _something._ But he couldn't reach her. A few bubbles, and a dark stain were her only grave markings, and then all traces passed forever, with only fishes to eat her flesh.

After that, his memories all blurred into a red-tinged, rage-fuelled scream, the feeling of blood on his face, bone beneath his hands, and scales all meshed together into an unholy night terror. Then, nothingness, until he woke up next to Toothless. The dragon had curled around him, hugging him, keeping him warm, for they were still on this Thor-saken ice floe. The loss only properly hit him then, as he looked around, searching for any other survivors. It was only him and Toothless left.

That night he bawled like a babe, sobbing his loss, the tears freezing as the travelled down his cheek. And Toothless still held him close, making deep rumbling noises in his throat that if could've understood them, he was sure they would say 'I'm sorry'. Say 'it wasn't your fault'. Say 'I'm here for you'. For Thor knows how long they stayed like that, until the need to piss and eat overcame Him. They left soon after. If they had stayed a day longer, search parties from the other tribes would've reached them, telling them that Berk wasn't lost, that a handful of survivors and made it, huddled deep in the rock, hidden from the noses and the flames of dragons. But they didn't.

The last of the Hairy Hooligans were absorbed into the other tribes, and eventually forgotten to the cruel hand of time by the far, far north, only appearing in dusty scrolls, half-finished treatsies and abandoned manuscripts. But that is another story. Dear reader, the tale before you is of how Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the third lived.

_In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with worms and an oozy smell… _

His journey with Toothless took them over the sea, far south, farther than he'd ever been before. Sheets of ice stretched out before them for days. If it snowed, they flew up above the clouds. Fish was their only meal, catching it as they flew. Neither of them spoke a word for what felt like an age. Occasionally he forgot how to speak, but the memories of his family, his friends, his people brought it back with an aching sorrow. Sometimes Hiccup would cry silently, but on they went, blinded by loss and pain. He recorded it all down in his note book (That had by some miracle survived) as best as possible, writing miniscule shorthand notes on every surface, until the paper ran out. Hiccups' hair matted form lack of care, but always he redid Astrid's plaits. They were all he had left. That and Toothless, his stalwart companion. They flew on, and on and on, until flying became the only thing that seemed real anymore, the only colours in the world white, blue, and black.

The ice eventually became an iron grey sea, the air warmer. Hardly any dragons were visible now, and the ones that were, were tiny wretched beasts, devoid of any intelligence, even less so than the Terrible Terrors of Berk.

_He stopped and he could hear, when he listened hard, drops drip-drip-dripping from an unseen roof into the water below… _

When land eventually made itself known, they hadn't seen a dragon for days. The air also smelt different. Less salty, less sheep, and the scent of dragon was entirely gone. It was then that they saw the land, a vast, vast wave of a land, like nothing they had ever seen before, reaching out further than the eye could see, swallowing the horizon in the great maw of the mountains, reaching up, up into the sky. That night they had a celebration of sorts, quietly though. For the first time since the start of their journey, Hiccup slept and didn't wake screaming.

xxx

**AN: Don't shoot meh *Holds up hand pathetically* okay, I haven't updated, yet only spewed more crap at you. I really am sorry. I hope to write some more soonish, but on January I have two english exams, besides the final deadline for my art coursework. I should probably be doing that now actually. Any mistakes in the lore, grammar, spelling, feel free to yell at me. I hope you all had a very merry Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Saturnalia, Yule, obscure hipsterish festival, whatever. I just wish you a good 2015. **

**~The Cat (What did that) **


	2. Chapter 2: Exodus Ends

The dwarrow folk of Ered Luin started telling stories to travellers of strange cries heard at night, a black thing in the sky, and the unmistakeable smell of dragon. It worried the ones who escaped from Erebor, reminding them of the fire, the long trek and the hardship their people faced. They slept a little closer to their weapons at night. The markets saw the demand for cram rise. The hysteria rose to such an extreme among some of the people that Princess Dis had to give an official speech to dispel the rumours. However, the unmistakeable rise in the guard and in the defences around settlements could not be ignored.

Of course, none of this was known to Toothless or Hiccup. From their lofty perch in the skies they saw very little of the activity below, hidden in the mountains. They spent their days sleeping, Hiccup often curled under one of Toothless' wings, and their nights hunting. They saw no further dragons, but instead, discovered many different animals, ones they had never seen before. The glimpses of the peoples that lived in this strange were, well, strange.

From what they had seen, some of the people here looked a little like the Meatlug tribe, or the Beserkers, but were all too short to be full grown men, but yet had some of the most magnificent beards he had seen. The normal sized men he had seen, seemed to be few and far between, but the ones that he did see looked like the Peaceable Farmers that Gobber talked about raiding when he was a lad. They didn't speak the same language either, from the snatches of conversation he heard, the short ones practically growling, whilst the taller ones spoke a soft, sing song sounding tongue. Either way, neither Hiccup nor Toothless could make head or tails of it.

_All around the clearing Warg fire was leaping. But the wolf guards did not leave the trees. Maddened and angry, they were leaping and howling around the trunks, cursing the dwarves in their horrible language… _

After a week or so resting, they began traveling in ernest again, heading further inland. Hiccup had never seen so much land before, stretching out like a sea of lumpy earth, waves of rock jutting out, frozen like ice. It fascinated him, although Toothless seemed unnerved by some of the creatures. They still flew by night, the waning moon providing more coverage for them to travel unnoticed.

**AN: About Hiccup on beards; looking at the Hairy Hooligans in the film and the books, they are hairy (As** **the name suggests) and seem to take pride in facial hair. I mean, just look at Stoick's beard! So it seems natural he would like the beards. Also, in the book it mentions that having your beard cut off was the ultimate Viking shame. The tribes he mentions are lifted from the book series. The language I'm using for Westron is Welsh, as a) Tolkien based the elven languages off Welsh, and as both men and elves are made by the same God, it seems a logical way to continue, and b) I need to practice my Welsh (Any speakers, I would be glad for advice). **

**Neil Finn's 'Strangest Friends' was the music for the latter half of the chapter. Incidently, he also recorded the song at the end of the first Hobbit film. **

**Disclaimer: HTTYD does not belong to me, and neither does the Hobbit. In any form of media, they both belong to their respective** owners.


	3. Chapter 3: Onward Bound

A human tinker reported the theft of several blank notebooks and some sticks of charcoal, but the city guard he tried to take the matter up with just laughed, until he nearly pissed himself. He then threatened to lock him up in the gaol if he didn't skedaddle. Really, the guard sighed shaking his head, if the Tinkers wanted to lie to get compensation, they should at least make it believable. I mean, whoever heard of a ghost stealing paper?

Humans generally have short memories when it comes to ghosts and the like, forgetting true ghosts until they appeared again, complete with bad omens, rings and so forth. So when they dubbed the unknowing Hiccup and Toothless the 'Ghost' (For the people of Bree had no idea that they were not one entity, but two), they thought it a fitting name. A dark shadow flitting in the night? Definitely a ghost. That was the general consensus of the people. One little boy claimed he say a big, dark horse like creature, with wings and scales and a massive tail! But no one listens to children, so he was smacked for lying, and sent to bed without any supper, which crushed his belief in the supernatural for the rest of his life.

Over hill and dale, the pair flew, oblivious to the confusion they were causing. The notebooks they had stolen had come in handy, allowing Hiccup to chart their journey, expanding on the, now massive, map he was making. He didn't even know why he made it now. Before, before everything had gone to Hel in a hand basket, he'd planned on charting all of the Archipelago, being the first to do so. He'd never told his father of that ambition.

The trees on Berk had been scrubby, little more than bushes, seldom reaching above six foot. The trees here (Where ever here was exactly. Hiccup had been toying with some names, but Astrid had always been so much better at naming things, so he stopped, because just thinking about it made his eyes leak, and his chest ache with longing. He still missed them so much) were much taller, and very green, with oddly shaped leaves. Toothless loved the trees, indeed, uprooting them, and scrawling in the earth had now become one of his favourite activities to do. Besides flying. (Incidentally, Toothless' uprooting of trees all across Middle Earth would be documented, an later would spawn a cult claiming that creatures from another planet were trying to communicate with them, and would try and decipher a meaning. It even created a modernistic art movement, thoroughly hated by the Elves and Ents, for it had all come from the uprooting trees! To make such a thing an art form was near sacrilegious)

As they flew further and further into this sea of land, the trees changed, until they became very unlike the ones seen before. They were tightly clustered trees with knobbly leaves, and they grew far greater than any he had seen before, struggling to touch the sky with their branches. The trees retained the dark, and cradled it softly, holding it like a mother holds her child, and if the dark was a child, it was a strange child, the sort that finds burning ants hilarious. Hiccup and Toothless both unanimously agreed to avoid going under the canopy of the forest after doing so and finding giant spiders. They did however continue to fly over it, towards the shadow of a great mountain. Hiccup didn't even know where they were going anymore, and didn't much care. Toothless and the map were his only concerns. Toothless was happy, just being with him and flying. The map could expand any way that they went, so why not this way? Just no spiders please.

_…and as he looked up, among the black emperor butterflies, a dark shape loomed in the distance. Like a giant moth it flew, dominating his vision, drawing closer, closer, until with a shrieking, whistling sound it passed over head, shocking Bilbo so that he nearly lost his grip, and any words he might have said choked in his throat and were lost. _

_"What do y' see?" One of the dwarves (Probably Bofur) cried out from below. Bilbo made a strangled noise, before regaining some of the famous Baggins composure. He called out below, in an awed-but-still-quite-scared voice, for he was only a little hobbit, and it had been very big. _

_"A dragon!" _

**I've wanted to write that encounter for absolutely ages. Thank you so much for your support! Every follow, like or review brings a smile to my face (: I'm do have some less-than-stellar news though. I'm just entering the exam season, and probably won't update until the summer. Coursework and revision are eating my brains :(. Anyone else doing exams, I wish you the best of luck!**


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